


Soft Revolution

by 13ee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Finn-centric, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9292208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13ee/pseuds/13ee
Summary: Finn ponders the differences between the First Order and the Resistance and what it means to be a family.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a ~Spite Write~ because I saw a post saying that Hux had more fics than Finn and that is Not Okay. Also I am a huge nerd and found family is my jam. Special thanks to my best friend Kai for editing and revising help. They are the best and the most and my writing would be shit without them.

 

 

     One of the strangest things is the softness. Of course it is a military base, so there are guns and ships and uniforms, but even with those things, those hard things, indications of war and death, there is a softness. It isn’t just the soft clothing and cots, but the whole feeling. The lights and sounds, the architecture; none of it is like the Order. Finn can walk the halls in his soft clothes, rub his hand over his soft hair, still marveling that he doesn’t have to wear a helmet, never wears a helmet anymore. He will, he knows, when he is finally cleared for combat, but for now he wears no armor, no uniform, just soft clothes and soft hair.

     The most astonishing thing is not the softness of the objects here, but of the people. He never knew people could be soft. Even General Organa, the head of the Resistance, has a softness to her. Sometimes she looks at him with that softness in her eyes, in the turn of her lips. He didn’t know what to make of it, was unable to recognize it at first, mistook it for sorrow. She looks at him with that too at times. Looks at a lot of people like that, sometimes looks at nothing at all. He had known what sorrow looked like, not from scarce glimpses of his own face, but he had seen it on the faces of others and sometimes in his dreams, only half remembered. He can tell that it’s sorrow from the way the feeling rushes up inside him to meet it, the tightness in his chest mirrored on the face of another.

      Mostly, General Organa is steel. Ferocity and passion and control. It is impossible not to respect her, not to feel her power in the very air that surrounds her. That power had scared him at first; he was afraid of what she would do to him. But now he is beginning to feel a foreign sense of safety when he sees her, even when her eyes narrow and he can see the rage behind them. She is a protector as well as a warrior. He had not known such a thing was possible. There are no protectors in the Order.

      But the General is not the only person with softness. All of the people at the base seem to have it. Some seem to have more, but perhaps it is only less guarded. He hasn’t been here long, has been awake for even less, but he has seen that softness in everyone, in various ways. Poe was the first. It still baffles Finn. Poe was hurt and bleeding and desperate for escape and Finn, Finn wasn’t even Finn yet, still dressed in the uniform of the enemy. But once they broke free and Poe was full of joy and relief even as the fear clung to him, he still had it, that hint of softness even in all the urgency and panic. Finn had not recognized it then, but he felt its loss as he watched the sand swallow the tie fighter. He had felt many things then; even now he feels so many things, too many things. Rey understood that; she too was puzzled by the softness, by _Finn's_ softness, she said, though Finn had not realized he had any. Rey was not soft when he met her: she was terrifying. Rey still wasn’t soft. But she had that softness too. She was passionate and powerful like General Organa but her softness was different. Finn thinks he gets it sometimes. Because sometimes he can feel it behind his eyes and in the muscles of his mouth. Sometimes he feels it in his whole body. It seems, like sorrow, softness wells up in him when he sees it.

      He didn’t know about soft before. Even after, he never dreamed that he could be soft, that he could house any softness within his hard body. He has lived so long within the hard white shell in the hard halls and on the hard cots surrounded by hard people. Those people had families, he learned. The officers, the same ones who stood in their hard uniforms with their hard eyes, had families. He couldn’t imagine they could have softness, even though the families he saw were full of it. But then he thought of Ben, and Han, and the General. He thought of the General looking at nothing. He wasn’t sure if he would ever understand families. When he had mentioned this to Poe he had laughed and clapped him on the shoulder and told Finn that he didn’t think anyone really understood families. Sometimes though. When he was with Rey and Poe, or when General Organa spoke to him with that strong determined softness in her eyes and her voice, he thought maybe he could feel it. Feel the softness that he had seen when Resistance fighters saw their families again when they returned from missions. He saw it also in squad members stumbling out of their ships and into each other’s arms, and in people gathered around tables laughing or sitting silently not even looking at each other, the softness present in their bodies and the air around them.

      Poe had told him that families sometimes had nothing to do with who a person was born to or who they were raised with. Poe had looked deep into Finn’s eyes as he said this, his hands warm and strong where the rested on his shoulders. Later Rey told him she thought Poe might be right. Her family had left her, and Finn didn’t know if he had ever had one. Rey and Finn held tight to each other’s hands. Now there was a softness in the act that made it so different from the first time he had frantically held on to her as they hurdled through the marketplace on Jakku.

      Finn was healing, and Rey had to leave again soon, and Poe was off planet and worrying Finn half to death. But Finn thought this time when he went into battle, even in his new helmet and new uniform, he might be able to hold onto the softness growing inside him.  He might be able to believe that the softness was his, something he held within himself and that the softness shown to him was something he deserved, something he had earned. For now, he simply watched as Rey flitted from tree to shrub to flower to sedge, greeting each in kind and muttering to herself. The General had told him Poe would be returning soon, and one of Poe’s pilot friends had told him that the mess hall was supposed to be serving Finn’s favorite tonight when they passed in the halls. He sat in the forest watching Rey and the shadows and the clouds and he felt the softness rising in his chest. It felt like the warmth of Rey’s hand in his, or General Organa’s eyes, of Poe’s shoulder resting against his own. The softness was new and strange. But each time Finn saw it in others or felt it in himself he felt like he was defecting all over again, terrified and elated, leaving the hardness of the Order behind. War required hardness, and the Resistance was not without it, but sometimes Finn thought it was the softness that would win them the war.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is kinda from the a song by the same name by Stars? But I don't even remember the song at all so. It is mostly just the title ~felt right~ Also there are some parts I am still not totally happy with but kind of gave up on, so if anyone has any tips or whatever that would be cool. Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!


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